


To Come So Far So Cold A Day

by babykid528



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:51:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykid528/pseuds/babykid528
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel has some questions only Anna can answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Come So Far So Cold A Day

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Lies, lies, and more lies. Supernatural belongs to the CW and Kripke and Co. I’m just playing with the boys.

  
He sat and he watched. Two birds hopped along the cement path right in front of his feet. He took note of how blissfully unaware they seemed. They didn’t care at all that he was sitting less than a foot away. That he could so easily harm them. He, the much larger creature. They just continued to hop, feathers ruffling gently in a gust of wind that swirled both of them in a whirl of white powder. He tilted his head as they shook off the flakes of snow that settled on their bodies.

The crunch of footsteps and the sound of heavy mouth breathing broke his reverie and sent the birds flying off across the park. He watched as their little bird bodies disappeared from sight.

“Castiel?”

Castiel sighed with a measure of relief.

“Anna,” he greeted neutrally in return while continuing to look forward at the winter landscape.

She hesitated a moment before stepping around the bench he was seated on so she could sit down beside him.

“I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with me,” she began. Her voice sounded tinged with worry.

Castiel allowed himself a brief glance in her direction. She looked healthy and strong. Radiant now that she had her Grace back.

“You have disobeyed,” he admitted.

“As have you, on occasion.”

He turned to stare at her, eyes narrowed.

“What I have done is not the sa—”

“Let’s not argue semantics,” Anna interrupted, holding a hand up to stall his protest. “You wanted to see me?”

Castiel turned back forward and dipped his chin slightly, barely a nod.

“Castiel?” Anna’s voice was quieter as she hesitantly broke the silence again.

“I…” He stopped himself and began again, “I wanted to know why… when you disobeyed… why you chose Earth over Heaven?”

He sat unmoving, awaiting her answer.

It did not come. Instead, he startled as Anna’s fingers brushed his cold cheek. He turned to look at her once again.

“You already know the answer, Castiel.” She informed him gently, eyes uncharacteristically soft.

“I don’t…”

“You wouldn’t be asking me the question if you didn’t already know the answer.”

He released a sigh, creating a puff of foggy breath in the cool air.

“You have the hunger.” Her words were a statement and not a question, Castiel noted.

“Hunger?” He asked.

“Of course you do,” she continued mostly to herself. Castiel noted the way she began slowly stroking his cheek. The way she observed him clearly mirrored the way he had been observing those birds: she was studying him. “You hunger to feel.”

“No—” He shook his head forcefully.

“Yes!” She insisted, “You want to feel like the humans.”

“No.”

“It’s no use lying, Castiel,” Anna cupped both of his cheeks in her impossibly warm palms, halting protests. “I have been where you are. Tired of simply observing. Equally tired from following blind orders in the name of our Father… Only, you know our Father isn’t calling the shots…”

“Not at the moment,” Castiel corrected her. “He will again.”

“You don’t know that—”

“Yes!” Castiel insisted, “He will!”

Anna took a deep breath and nodded begrudgingly, “Okay.”

“What I really want to know,” Castiel asked, jaw set in the face of her lack of faith, “is how you chose to abandon your family.”

“Gabriel abandoned the family too.”

“Yes,” Castiel conceded, “But Gabriel did not cut out his Grace.”

Anna’s responding flinch was so slight that Castiel almost didn’t catch it.

“Is that what you really want to know, Castiel?” She asked, voice soft, “How to cut out your Grace so you can fall to earth?”

“Never—”

“But you have wondered. How to be human.”

He paused for a moment before responding truthfully, “Yes.”

Anna pulled her hands away from his face, as if she had been burned, and she clasped them in her lap.

“Anna…”

“It would do you no good,” she told him.

He stared at her, brow furrowed.

“When I Fell I started life as an unborn child. You would need to Fall into a womb and be born human, Castiel. That is not what you want.”

“I would never betray—”

“You would and you have, just not at this level,” Anna corrected him once again with a frustrated sigh. She shook her head and stood so she was looking down on him and he was looking up. “You cannot Fall and wake up as the new soul in your vessel’s body. Jimmy still exists. You would take your own human form, Castiel, and you would need to take it from birth and that is not what you want.”

“Well, it is a good thing I would never abandon my Grace and my family like that then,” Castiel growled, frustrated.

For a moment, he thought Anna would roll her eyes.

“It’s a good thing…”

Anna began to walk away. However, she turned to face him again after a few steps.

“You have begun to feel. I can see it plain as day in your eyes… You will never feel beyond that. Never feel at the depth the humans do. Not without Falling and losing the Winchesters in the process,” she spoke slowly, clearly, “You can only be with them—with _him_ —in your current form, Castiel. And it will never be enough. I am truly sorry.”

Anna vanished with a gust of air and the slight fluttering sound of wings.

Castiel felt a sharp twisting in his chest.

 _This must be what loss feels like,_ he thought, staring once again at the winter scene surrounding him.  


.


End file.
